Russia on Friday added respected journalist and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmytro Muratov to its list of foreign agents, a label the authorities routinely use to stifle criticism, AFP reported.

The Russian Ministry of Justice said that Muratov “used foreign tribunes to spread opinions aimed at forming a negative attitude towards the foreign and domestic policy of the Russian Federation.”

Muratov received the prestigious award in 2021 along with Filipino investigative journalist Maria Ressa for their work for freedom of speech.

“Dmitry Muratov defended freedom of speech in Russia for decades in increasingly difficult conditions. In 1993, he was one of the founders of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Since the founding of the newspaper, six of its journalists have been killed,” the Nobel Committee said at the time.

The Kremlin congratulated him after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, and President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman called him “brave.”

“We can congratulate Dmytro Muratov,” Kremlin press secretary Dmytro Peskov told reporters.

“He works hard according to his own ideals, he’s committed to them, he’s talented, he’s brave,” he said.

On the same day, the Ministry of Justice of Russia added nine journalists to the list of foreign agents.

• The Kremlin’s reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a Russian journalist: “He is brave”

Vladimir Putin: Don’t use Nobel as a shield

“If (Muratov) does not violate Russian law and does not give any reason to be declared a foreign agent, then he will not be one,” Vladimir Putin said days after Muratov won the Nobel Prize.

But the head of the Kremlin warned the journalist not to hide behind the Nobel Prize and not to “use it as a shield” to violate Russian laws and “attract attention to yourself.”

Muratov was part of a group of journalists who founded Nova Gazeta in 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The newspaper became one of the few independent voices in the press, tightly controlled by the Russian state.

Last year, a Russian court stripped Novaya Gazeta, run by Dmytro Muratov, of its publishing license, a decision that Muratov called politically motivated.

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